Sugar body scrub is pretty expensive so I decided to see what the home-made version was like. This recipe is particularly good for “normal” skin (dry skin and oily skin require slightly different variations).

A word of warning: you will need to be patient as this project takes several weeks to make, although altogether it will take you less than an hour of labour in total.

Sugar Body Scrub, made from oil infused with home-grown and home-dried marigolds.

We purchased our safflower oil, caster oil, essential oil and clean container from New Directions in Marrickville, a one-stop shop for cosmetic ingredients.

What to do:

Grow some marigold flowers. Not only are they useful in home remedies, they are beneficial for the garden too.

Cut the flowers off the stems as each flower matures. Dry the flowers. This may take about 3 weeks if you’re using the traditional method, or faster if you have a dehydrator machine.

Cut the petals off the dried marigold flowers, put them in a glass jar, then cover them completely with 100ml of safflower oil. Wait for one week.

Strain the infused safflower oil back into its original bottle. You can do this fairly easily using cheesecloth to strain the oil through a funnel. Don’t forget to add a note on the label that the oil is infused!

Mix the 100g of raw sugar with 23ml of the infused safflower oil and 5ml of caster oil. Add 20 or so drops of your favourite essential oil. Mix well and spoon the mixture into a clean container.

This recipe has been adapted from the Sugar Body Scrub recipe in James Wong’s book Grow Your Own Drugs.